Three of the top presenters scheduled to speak at a technology conference in Texas next week will deliver their remarks remotely due to leak investigations that have left them all unable or unwilling to come to the United States.

Former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden will discuss the
impact of the National Security Agency’s spy efforts at the South
by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas next Monday,
organizers announced this week.

Planners for SXSW said on Tuesday that Snowden, the 30-year-old
ex-systems analyst who leaked secret NSA documents to the media last year,
will participate in a live discussion at the festival via
teleconference from Russia. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and
journalist Glenn Greenwald have both previously agreed to speak
at this year’s event as well.

“Hear directly from Snowden about his beliefs on what the
tech community can and must do to secure the private data of the
billions of people who rely on the tools and services that we
build,” festival organizers said in a statement.

Ben Wizner — the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s
Speech, Privacy and Technology Project and a legal advisor to
Snowden — will moderate the conversation between Snowden and the
ACLU’s chief technologist, Christopher Soghoian. The event will
be broadcast online courtesy of the Texas Tribune.

Previously unpublished documents disclosed to the media by
Snowden since last summer have exposed an array of NSA programs
involving the United States spy agency’s efforts to acquire
seemingly all digital communications across the world. He’s been
accused of espionage and theft by the US Department of Justice
for leaking that information, but the approval by Moscow last
August of an asylum request there has allowed him to so far deter
being prosecuted in America.

Assange, the founder of anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks who is also
under investigation for disclosing classified documents,
previously agreed to speak at the conference remotely for an
event scheduled for this Saturday morning. The 42-year-old
Australian publisher has been confined to the Ecuadorian Embassy
in London for over a year, and cannot leave the facility without
facing immediate arrest at the hands of British authorities. He’s
wanted for questioning in Sweden.

On Monday, American journalist Glenn Greenwald will also speak
about the ongoing NSA controversy at the festival, but from
Brazil. He’s a confidant of Snowden and has worked closely with
the former systems analyst on the NSA documents, but on advice of
counsel has avoided returning to the US since the first stories
involving the intelligence leaks were published last June.

"Surveillance and online privacy look to be one of the
biggest topics of conversation at the 2014 SXSW Interactive
Festival," reads a statement released this week by
individuals involved in the event.. "As organizers, SXSW
agrees that a healthy debate with regards to the limits of
surveillance is vital to the future of the online
ecosystem."